What is SEO?: Things that will Help You Scale Your Business & be No.1
Today, when businesses are going digital, the need for SEO is in high demand. Doesn’t matter if you own a shop, or a properly branded venture, SEO (search engine optimization) plays a crucial role in your long-term success.
In simple words, SEO is the process to improve your website’s ranking on SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page) and excelling in doing that is a major skill that you need to possess in today’s skill-driven industry.
And the higher your website’s rankings, naturally you will be attracting more customers and business prospects. This will help you scale your business and leverage the opportunities present at hand. Now, who wouldn’t want that!
How SEO Works?
Let’s cut to the chase and help you know what are the fundamentals of SEO and how does it really work?
Search engines like Microsoft’s Bing or Google have their own little bots. The primary objective of these crawlers or bots is to collect information on each and every website present on the internet and store all the data in their index.
After this, the algorithm of these search engines comes into play. These algorithms on the basis of several search engine ranking factors place these results in chronological order. This is the ranking that you see when you search for any query. The following are a few factors that help in determining the rank of any website page.
- User Experience
- Quality of Content
- Search Intent
- Keywords Used & Targeted
- Relevance of the Content & Overall Page
- DA & PA
Like these, there are many other hundreds of factors that search engines like Google take into consideration and that play a key role in determining if your web page is worth ranking for your targeted keyword or query or not.
Types of SEO
The few basic types of SEO are:
On-Page SEO – This method is used to optimize the content present on your website for better search engine rankings.
Off-Page SEO – This method consists of techniques that help your website rank higher on search engines. However, unlike On-Page SEO, nothing in this entire process of happens on your website. Usually, this type of SEO includes practices like working on Quora, Article and Blog submission the ultimate aim of which is link building.
Technical SEO – As the name suggests, this method is more technical and contains steps like managing website structure, site audit, website speed, page speed, etc.
Local SEO – This part of SEO is meant to increase your brand presence locally. If your business has a physical presence especially like a shop, in that case, excelling at Local SEO can open many new prospects for you.
What are the Top Mistakes to Avoid in SEO?
As many people don’t know about the technical aspect of SEO, they tend to make several mistakes in their optimization journey which can cost them dearly in the long run. Thus, to save you from any such disaster, we are listing some of the common mistakes that you, being a newbie SEO expert, should definitely avoid.
1. Not Understanding Your Target Audience –
The main objective of search engine optimization is to show relevant content to people who want to see it. For instance, ads, products, services to people who are looking for such ads, products and services. Doing the opposite not just makes any sense but is a drastic waste of time and energy as well.
2. Not Keeping a Tab on the Analytics –
One of the major mistakes to avoid is to not keep a proper tab on the analytics part of your website. Knowing the amount of traffic and from where it is coming and on what query can help you a great deal in increasing your brand’s online presence. When it comes to SEO, analytics is a vast term and contains various aspects, ignoring which can land you in serious trouble.
3. Ignoring Mobile First Indexing –
Today, even search engines like Google are giving preference to Mobile first ranking. Thus, not working on Mobile first would only be a serious mistake and nothing else.
4. Compromising with the Content –
The most common mistake which people usually tend to make is that they compromise on the quality of the content. This is a BIG NO! Today, content is one of the biggest factors that help SEO perform better and get you relevant rankings on your desired keywords.
5. Not Including Important Elements –
Apart from all the aforementioned queries, it is important to not overlook other important elements like Domain Authority, Page Authority, On-Page and Off-Page Links, Social Signals and many other factors that play a pivotal role in ranking any website higher than its competitors. Thus, overlooking any of these factors will only do you more harm than good in the long run.
Culminating our topic, we can say that apart from ranking higher and better, Search Engine Optimization is also about improving the overall experience of the customers and establishing trust. And in doing that, all the aforementioned points can help you a great deal, making your ranking process effortless.